We have a strange situation in the UK where GDP is going up (thanks to immigration) but GDP per person is actually going down (thanks to immigration).
Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
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Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#692GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…
if you hired care assistant then you have time for some other activities like work which is more profitable than cost of care assistant thus economy has more goods. Life expectancy lowers when young people die, most often in work accidents which is related to low unemployment.
My wife had a good job. She made the median household income in the area on her salary alone (my salary was still better, but that's beside the point).
When we had our second kid, the hustle wasn't worth it. Two kids in daycare took 90% of her take home pay. It was costing us more for her to work than to stay home with the kids.
Also, kids need their parents. An infant being away from their mom for that long is unhealthy for the infant
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
> perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election How does the election tell you anything about the economy? Are you injecting a bunch of your reasons why you think people voted for X or Y or is there a factual argument behind that sentence?
There is an argument that elections can be understood as a referendum on the previous 4 years. E.g. voting for the incumbent candidate/party means more of the same.
Yes but how would that say anything specifically about a particular topic unless it was a defining and undeniable circumstance that happened during the presidency like a war or major scandal - and even then I think it's hard to confidently say "this is why people voted for X" without proper polling (and even that we know how accurate it is - but at least it'd be data).
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#694And yet, mysteriously, somehow, as a European, I am pretty glad not to be a US citizen right now. I earn more than enough to live while working only 36 hours per week and my government is not run by lunatics.
> my government is not run by lunatics
Oh my sweet summer child
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The EU single market is largely a myth from the perspective of wanting to start a successful company that can compete internationally. It's not any easier now than it was before the EU existed. That's not exactly true. The single market has been a great thing for companies producing physical products. That's also what was in mind of the people who designed the single market. They wanted to unify standards for physi…
Simple way to eliminate language barriers is to introduce English as main language of schooling, thus making all next generation bilingual. It's done by middle and upper classes anyway so idk why commoners are intentionally left in the dust by the System. Let's face it: our culture (all across the EU), is American, anyway. It's stupid to pretend otherwise.
I hate that you are right regarding the cultural aspect. I wish we were better at preserving our respective identities. That's why I like going to small movie theatres; they tend to play local films. And you do stumble on gems from time to time.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#696I long for a US-like entrepreneurial attitude here in the UK. Business people here think that they are playing zero sum games. Everyone looks to the govt for funding and direction.
I am reflecting on Deepmind. This company saw the AI revolution before anyone else. London based. They did an amazing job. Sold to Google. The problem is that long term the growth and money now goes back to the US. Maybe the UK is just too small to produce world leading companies.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#697Us Europeans are more 'detached' from the economy than people are in the USA. We basically coast along. We don't live on credit, but debit, and most people have zero investments outside their house. We're content and risk adverse and don't care much for the stock market (even though many people's pensions are tied to it). In places where higher education is cheap, or even sometimes free (like Sweden), there's less pr…
> The EU single market is largely a myth from the perspective of wanting to start a successful company that can compete internationally. It's not any easier now than it was before the EU existed. This is simply not true. There is freedom of movement for workers which means it's easy to recruit top talent across the continent. Remote work is also much simplified. There's no friction moving goods and company assets acr…
> This is simply not true. There is freedom of movement for workers which means it's easy to recruit top talent across the continent. Remote work is also much simplified. There's no friction moving goods and company assets across borders.
There is absolute friction for people to even move across the borders. I moved to Sweden a few years ago and it took 8 months before I was fully part of the system. Now I am looking to move to Norway, and it's going to be the same ordeal.
There are countries where you can just show up with your bags and start living there but it doesn't apply to all of them.
So good luck recruiting talent, when the talent has to jump through hoops to get an ID card or open a bank account or even rent an apartment.
> The regulatory environment is significantly unified under the EU so there are few regulatory risks for companies growing outside their country within the region. Every EU company also has access to the entire continent's consumer base – 450 million residents, which is 50% more than the US.
It's not about regulatory risk but about overheads. The rules for selling cross border are vague and opaque and you need a PHD just to make sure that you comply with all the regulations or a good lawyer.
Yes, in theory you can reach 450M customers, in practice much less so.
> I just don't think we think about the US in the EU as much as you think.
Maybe you don't but I can assure you that our leaders think of the US for the simple reason that the EU is not in position of strength at the moment.
Case and point, the EU leadership is scrambling to avoid Trump starting a trade war with the EU while also trying to placate China who is also starting to show it's strength.
If we were in a position of strength, things would be different but the EU simply does not have the muscle to put up a fight.
The EU has stopped investing it's its armies and can barely help Ukraine. It has some tech companies but an order of magnitude less than the US. It is currently losing the space race against the US and China and it obliterated it's industrial base.
All of this is going to come back to haunt us at some point and not in a good way.
> Spotify, Revolut, Klarna, Bolt Mobility, Wise, N26,
You have to realize that most of the businesses you mentioned are completely dependent on American infrastructure. Where do you think that Klarna et al are deploying their applications? On Hetzner? No on AWS or GCP or Azure.
How do you get access to those applications? Through the app store or Google play which both belong to American companies.
Who is driving the innovation in AI , self driving cars, robotics? No the EU.
> You are right in the sense that the European way of life is very different from the US way of life and we don't care that much for the economy. Yet Europe is still home to some of the largest stock markets in the world including LSE, Euronext, FSE, SIX Swiss, etc. We just don't value it as highly as other aspects in life – there is a strong sentiment of rejection of the rat race, growth of shareholder value at all costs, and other such American things in Europe.
You don't care about the economy until your government services start shutting down because the economy is in the dumpster due to 20 years of under-investments and over taxation.
If productivity does not go up, if people don't care as you said then the outcome is stagnation and a decline of quality of life.
The services you rely on are paid for by the taxes raised on the companies of Europe. Who is going to fund the European lifestyle when companies decide to leave the EU taking their profits and taxes elsewhere because the EU is smothering them with rules and regulations?
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking the same thing the other day. Like how much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. What percentage of the GDP is all that infrastructure (sewage, heating, power plants, power transmission, car production, road maintenance)? Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels…
> much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. [...] , but it doesn't create value. The "value" is for the citizens that prefer suburbs style living. People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburb…
Indeed. Look at the most expensive places to live in the Bay Area - it’s not the urban centers, it’s the suburbs.
Americans like space. They like big houses. They like not hearing their neighbors. They like to live on a street that is quiet.
Even the ones that don’t like driving are willing to do it as a trade off for all those things.
Most of the young people I knew in SF who lived there in their 20’s - about 90% moved to the suburbs when they got older. Being close to bars or restaurants doesn’t matter much for most older people. What matters is low crime, space and good schools. They can drive to the city if they need to.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU is number one in quality of life and that’s all that matters to me. If we work just hard enough to maintain and maybe even improve it, other countries can do their pissing contest.
>The EU is number one in quality of life I feel like this is only the case for a very narrow demographic - the young, bicycle-riding, sex-having mid-20s college grad still trying to figure out their calling in life while living frugally without a care. It really sucks being 40 and still earning like 57k EUR or whatever.
>It really sucks being 40 and still earning like 57k EUR or whatever.
Is this a joke?
60k in France means you earn more than 92% of the population.
60k in Italy means you earn more than 96% of the population.
60k in Germany means you earn more than 80% of the population.
Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking the same thing the other day. Like how much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. What percentage of the GDP is all that infrastructure (sewage, heating, power plants, power transmission, car production, road maintenance)? Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels…
> much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. [...] , but it doesn't create value. The "value" is for the citizens that prefer suburbs style living. People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburb…
Except there's not really a choice right?
Family homes in city centers (in the US) are either very expensive or bad neighborhoods